It's beyond debate: Obama vs. Romney makes a good excuse for a party!

The first presidential debate is tonight. Have you made plans for your debate watch party? Nighttown owner Brendan Ring has.

MarketWatch.com says the Barack Obama/Mitt Romney showdown “may create a microeconomy all its own, thanks to the many viewing parties — both at homes and in bars and restaurants.”

Veteran restaurateurs “say they're surprised at how this presidential debate has prompted an interest in partying on par with a big game day in sports,” MarketWatch.com reports.

A case in point is Mr. Ring, whose venerable Cleveland Heights restaurant/club announced last week that it would put a debate viewing party on the calendar.

“He expected he might get a few responses,” MarketWatch.com says. “But as of late Tuesday, he was up to 250 reservations — and he's anticipating at least 100 more.”

Mr. Ring, who's bringing in eight 50-inch televisions to accommodate the crowd, tells MarketWatch.com, “We're doing triple the business of a typical Wednesday night, if not quadruple.”

Experts in the dining, snack food and beverage industries say it's hard to put an exact dollar figure on the potential impact, but many expect a bounce in sales this week.

“It's a contest, and people like to watch contests,” says Eric Shepard, executive editor of Beer Marketer's Insights, a trade journal.

Since we're talking about contests, the latest forecast in the race from Moody's Analytics, which produces a state-by-state prediction based on the most recent economic data, finds President Obama on track to capture 303 electoral votes. (A candidate needs 270 to win.)

Moody's is predicting that President Obama will win several important battleground states, including Ohio, Colorado and Virginia.

This and that

Never enough: The six largest U.S. banks posted a combined $63 billion in profit for the four quarters through June, “more than they earned in any calendar year since the (economy's) peak in 2006,” Bloomberg reports.

And they aren't happy about it.

“Those billions of dollars in profits aren't enough, according to interviews with more than a dozen bank executives and analysts,” Bloomberg reports. “The lowest leverage in a decade, return on equity at a third of 2006 levels, higher capital requirements, shares trading below book value, declining bonuses, job cuts, the European sovereign-debt crisis and a backlash against bankers have damped the joys of profit, they said.”

The public remains peeved with the lenders.

Dick Kovacevich, who retired as chairman of Wells Fargo & Co. in 2009, “was in the men's dining room of his San Francisco country club in July after the bank reported a $4.6 billion second-quarter profit,” Bloomberg notes. A man there spoke to him, and not to offer praise for the best results in the firm's 160 years.

“Wall Street was bailed out, and Main Street wasn't,” he told Mr. Kovacevich, the 68-year-old banker said in an interview.

(Boy, are these guys sensitive about criticism.)

Ralph Schlosstein, CEO of New York-based boutique investment bank Evercore Partners Inc., tells Bloomberg, “While there are things to celebrate for the senior professionals in these (large) institutions, sadly I don't think they do much celebrating. The challenge they face is how to adjust to this new capital regime, and the new regulatory regime, and to earn an adequate return on equity. None of them have yet broken the code.”

You won't like him when he's angry:This will not make Hugo Chavez happy. (And he's already in a cranky mood, as he faces a real threat in Sunday's election.)

Reuters reports that opening day for baseball in Venezuela is Oct. 11, but all is not well.

“Favorites like Cleveland Indians shortstop Asdrubal Cabrera are among the 57 Venezuelan players put on this year's 'extreme fatigue' list by their major league clubs, potentially banning them from playing in their home country during the off season,” according to the news service. (He sure has played with “extreme fatigue” since the All-Star break.)

Many of the 57 likely will be able to negotiate at least some playing time at home this year, Reuters reports. For instance, Mr. Cabrera's coach at the Caracas Lions expects to see the 26-year-old switch hitter in the starting lineup by December.

“But the list has angered fans of the eight teams that make up Venezuela's league, saying it casts a shadow of uncertainty over the local season and threatens to lower the quality of play,” Reuters says.

Free to me: Americans bought twice as many albums in the first half of the year as they downloaded illegally through BitTorrent, The Wall Street Journalreports, based on a new report from research firm Musicmetric.

However, the report identifies 20 cities where illegal BitTorrent activity is highest, and one of them is in Ohio: Bowling Green. (The Bowling Green people I know are upstanding citizens; what's wrong with kids today?)

Americans downloaded 75.6 million albums from BitTorrent from January to June, the London-based company said. That compares with 150.5 million CDs and album downloads sold in the United States during the same period, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

They bought 698 million songs during the same period, while they used BitTorrent to download just 21.3 million single songs.

The highest levels of BitTorrent activity aren't in big cities or tech hubs.

“Gainesville, Fla., had the highest per-capita rate of BitTorrent activity, followed by Albany, Ga.; Fairbanks, Alaska; Lexington, Ky.; and Tallahassee, Fla.,” according to The Journal.